Anyway.
So while we have no blue answer on PVP gear requirements — there is still, as far as I have found, no plans to release any PVP gear that can be obtained solely through battleground participation — someone DID manage to get an answer, from Tigole no less, on where Blizzard might be going with the battleground system, and it's super-exciting.
Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).
But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we're definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it's very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it's important for the community to know that it's on our minds.
Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we'd like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We're also exploring the concept of a complimentary "competitive" bg system as well. Over time, we'd like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance -- the core of our game.
We're also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We're also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.
Please don't take this post as a promise. This won't be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it's important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.
I've highlighted two items.
1. I would LOVE a competitive battleground system. My problem with the arena requirement is not and has never been the competitiveness of arenas, but the fact that dueling is mad boring. In fact, I think a competitive system would actually make battlegrounds more fun for me — I'm super competitive, as evidenced by my folder full of screenshots where Ahami topped the healing charts. (Seriously — Ideale's main role in PVP is and has always been defense, which is much harder to screenshot, but with Ahami, I just focus on keeping people alive and outhealing that stupid tree druid two levels above me with better gear and snapping a shot every single time I win. YOU'RE GOING DOWN, TREE! ... Um, I mean. I like to heal things. Yes.)
2. Well, there go my twinking plans — but here come delicious plans to level a hunter and a shaman entirely through PVP from twink level to 80. Hopefully, this will take long enough to implement that I will get to have fun being a twink first. Or perhaps be an optional feature, where you can turn off battleground leveling entirely (including in AV!) or turn it on and level exclusively through the BGs.
I'm not foreseeing being able to stick to my "Well I just won't PVP at all then!" guns (really, now that I'm removed from the drama by a week, I can see how overreactive that was), although I still plan to focus on that PVE thing for at least the early months of the expansion's end-game. I'd like to give raiding a try once or twice, at least. Now that I am in a good guild with good people and know the server (and who to avoid) a lot better, I think that it might be a bit more fun than the incredibly painful PUG experiences I've had in the past. Maybe. But the world PVP alone would destroy my resolve — I respond to at least half the stuff on World Defense when I'm online, and I cannot see that changing.
I still don't plan to do the arenas, though, unless I eventually cave and nekkid dance through them with Ideale (she's probably less likely to get PVE action, and I'd like to be able to do something other than mine crap with her). What I was thinking about doing was running some five-mans on her and just gemming/enchanting those drops with lots of +stam and resil, and supplementing this with the off-set pieces that can be obtained just through Wintergrasp/the battlegrounds. Probably quite haphazardly. It could be fun to experiment with this, though. Sort of like "Alternative paths to PVP gear." EDIT: Actually, this seems like it would be a really fun blog project, too, now that I'm thinking about it. Sort of a PVE'rs guide to reconfiguring PVE/crafted gear for PVP. Hmm.
Either way, though, I am hoping that the gear issues get worked out by the time I run out of end-game stuff to do on my mains (because at 80, there'll still be professions, rep grinds, and so on to focus on for a while). Otherwise, I foresee having an army of level 59 & 69 twinks and a lot of complaints about how boring it is when I can only run instances/raid once a week.
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